Applications & Installations

Berkeley Lab updates US solar project database

The US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has location-verified all solar projects above 1 MW in the United States and has organized them into a user-friendly map.
By
John Fitzgerald Weaver
Image: Berkeley Lab

From pv magazine USA

The US Geological Survey (USGS) Energy Resources Program, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Energy Markets and Policy Department, has created the US Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Database (USPVDB). This map, funded by the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office and USGS Energy Resources Program, monitors ground-mounted utility-scale solar projects larger than 1 MW (DC).

While much of this information has already existed in various government databases, the USPVDB augments that data with complementary information on the total footprint area and detailed attributes of each facility, including panel technology type, axis type, year of installation, and generation capacity.

Project site information was also added – whether it is a greenfield, or has previous, current, or suspected contamination, or if agrivoltaic. The projects were position-verified and digitized by aerial imagery, and checked for quality to verify facility locations.

The map viewer shows 3,676 total solar facilities representing 54,880 MW (AC) of generating capacity that was online before 2022. Figures from the resulting process are available for public use and are provided in multiple formats – ESRI shapefile, GeoJSON file, CSV, and XML.

pv magazine print edition

The November edition of pv magazine is dominated by the issue of global oversupply and examines the effects of a solar glut in the European Union, the United States, and other markets. We turn the spotlight on PV developments in South Korea, Taiwan, and Africa and update readers on technological progress in thin films, kerfless wafering, and mass produced heterojunction PV.

To continue reading, please visit our pv magazine USA website. 

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